Here’s the story. I have been sent 2 spam emails from a business, dating from the 15th and 28th of July. On the 15th I cycled past it and on the 28th I drove past it, and I had my cell phone with me on both occasions. Apart from those 2 occasions, I have not been past that business in a month (the period that Gmail holds spam; the business in question is kinda out of the way). I’m not a great believer in coincidences. These spam emails consist of nothing more than a URL that my virus software highlights red for me.
In 2012, this business legitimately emailed me, so it has my email address.
I always keep Bluetooth turned OFF on my phone. When I found the spam I checked, and it is still off. I do not use apps (and am vehemently anti-app, because of the potential security issues) though I will concede that years ago I certainly used a compass app and maybe a map app.
From previous threads in GQ I can begin to suspect the sort of thing that could going on but…
Can someone give a detailed (speculative or otherwise) explanation of what is happening?
From your description of the email, it is very likely not that business sending the spam. Lots of spam comes from infecting a computer with malware that then steals the victim’s contact list. They then send spam to the people on the contact list pretending to be the person or business they stole the contacts from. It’s one of the more effective ways of spammers getting new victims, as someone is less likely to be suspicious of a link sent to them by someone they know.
I’ve seen it many times, though mostly from spammers posing as people I know rather than businesses, but it’s the same idea. It is extremely unlikely that the spammer got your email as a result of you passing by the business with your smartphone’s wifi turned on.
Your phone is constantly checking in with cell towers, so even if you have GPS turned off the phone company knows where you are. With GPS turned on it is tracking your location in great detail. If the email is legitimate (and it could be fine, but just triggers your virus software because it looks suspicious) it could be simple viral marketing. Some ISPs and phone companies sell your location in real time to trigger marketing emails or texts.
Why do you bother carrying a phone if it doesn’t have apps on it? The only thing a phone can do without apps is act as a paperweight.
If, as is much more likely, you do have apps on it, then we would need to know what apps. For instance, can you read your e-mail on your phone? Can you send and receive text messages? Can you look at web pages? Can you make phone calls? If the answer to any of those is “yes”, then what do you use to do those things?
Last Friday evening I was at a concert in the park with my gf and another couple. Turns out all four of us own and were sitting in Helinox Chairs. The chairs collapse down to a very small size, yet are comfortable.
Hey, c’mon - I already fessed up to being a phone technophobe. Calls, texts, mail, internet - basically all I use it for. These are apps too, huh? It came with apps loaded - most never activated or used, some deleted. (Phone says: Gasp - you really want to delete Facebook? Yep, I surely do).
Do I need to list all the unactivated apps that are still on there? I have an allotment to tend to, you know (something to do with the demographics of the board).
I think I mentioned wifi because I mis-remembered your statement that you keep Bluetooth off as having said you keep wifi on, and then not bothering to go back to see that you in fact did not say that.
That said, if your phone’s wifi is left on, it will (usually) automatically connect to any wifi that you have connected to before, unless you’ve told your phone to forget that wifi connection. So I could go to Starbucks and use their wifi one day, then walk by there the next day and my phone will connect again while it’s still in my pocket. While there are security concerns related to this, targeted spam is unlikely to be one of them.
There are really three different sources of location information that your phone can use.
The first, and most obvious is the built-in GPS receiver’s info. The second is triangulation via the relative signal strength to cell towers of known location. The third is also triangulation, but is based on the inferred (or known) location of wi-fi hotspots. I don’t know if bluetooth is used or not- seems like it would be the least effective, since a lot of bluetooth connections are with things like portable speakers and cars.
So even if GPS is turned off and you’re not trying to connect to wi-fi, your phone can get a fairly good indication of your location based on the signal strength from various cell towers and wi-fi hotspots within range. It doesn’t have to even connect- it can just receive the signal for “Joes_wifi” and note that it’s -125 dB, and then use that vs. a Google db of wi-fi hotspots. And also help Google refine the position of “Joes_wifi” in the bargain.
Android users can turn that stuff off, but I don’t know about Apple users.
My guess is that it’s possible that you have the Google location tracking on, and that was used to identify the business you went past, or possibly your mobile provider is providing that information to advertisers.
Otherwise, if the business is something that you might be interested in, they’re getting pretty good at correlating what you do/search for, with what you might be interested in buying. So if you’re a big cyclist, and you search for a bunch of cycling stuff, it’s likely that the nearest cycling store that’s advertising through Google will be popping up on your banner ads and possibly sending you emails.
You should know that just because you’ve never used an app doesn’t mean it’s not ‘activated’. Yes, some apps need to be launched at least once to get them set up, but most of the apps that came on your phone are already working when you get them and are running in the background.
And that’s not even counting all the processes running in the background. It’s similar to going to your task manager on a Windows computer. There’s dozens of things listed there (that are running), only a small handful of which you’ll recognize as being programs you installed.
Hmm - I did wonder if maybe the little bastards were running anyway. There was a thread a while back (which I can’t find right now) about micronetworks in stores and malls and super-selective advertising which suggested something similar. Do they really go away if you delete them, or do they just lurk in the background anyway?
Some apps are embedded into the carrier’s custom OS and can’t be deleted.* Search “Task Manager” in Google Play (assuming you have an Android phone) to see what’s running.
*It may be possible to Root the phone and install a non-custom (i.e. regular Android) OS. But may brick your phone or you lose the ability to do anything other than calling and texting.
I’m not 100% certain, but it could be that that business bought a location based advertising campaign from Google Ads. If you haven’t previously turned off the myriad of ways Google tracks your location, Google tracked you to the store. As part of the campaign, the business had uploaded its customer email list to Google Ads and then Google Ads sent the email once it knew you were within the location radius.
But I’m not really sure how it all works so I could be wrong.
My android phone has something called “Location Services” which are turned off. I have never used wifi. I do use the internet occasionally to look at street maps and a traffic congestion map. I have logged in to my email a couple of times through the internet, but do not have an email app set up. I make a couple of phone calls per month. Does that mean my location can still be pinpointed enough through cell tower triangulation that “somebody” could know that I just drove near particular location?
Like the OP, I’m a bit of a Luddite when it comes to cell phones.
This is exactly it. (Except you don’t need to already be on the stores mailing list)
To the OP. (Presuming you have an Android based phone) Google tracks your phone location through a variety of ways, many mentioned upthread. It is actually quite difficult to turn all of them off. (The triangulation method not at all unless you switch the phone off) Then one of the options when a business signs up with Google Ads is a geographic location option, whereby their advertisement is sent to anyone who either A) is in that physical location and/or shows interest in that location (say by a google maps search). It’s as easy as that. The only difference between reality and Orwell is this survelliance is used to sell you stuff.
FYI on Google’s site enticing businesses to sign up for this service it explains location for a mobile device can be determined by:
GPS
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth
Google’s mobile ID location database (ie triangulation via proximity to various cell masts)
I think you’re being a bit harsh here. There are still lots of people who have flip phones; they can only make phone calls & do texting, though with some difficulty given the T9 keyboard.
There are some things that I can do on a website that I can’t do on an app, which means a browser which is in the standard build is the only app that is necessary. I can pay bills on my banks app but can only establish a new bill pay payee on the website. Granted that’s rare to do but if I can do everything on the website & only certain things on the app does it really pay to have the app?
My email app only stores 30 days (configurable - storage space & bandwith tradeoff) of email. I also don’t sync some of the lesser used folders. It’s easier to pull up the website than to go into options, change the setting, & wait for the additional info to download on the rare occasions that I need to. If I’m doing that, why use the app at all?
I don’t use the google app, just use a browser when I want to search for something.
There are also places that I use only occasionally that, while the merchant would want me to have their app, would be a waste of space for me. Restaurant ordering for example. I don’t do McDonald’s all that often, & when I do, it’s more a matter of convenience while driving - “I’m hungry, look, there’s a McD’s” Using a mobile app to order from their parking lot isn’t going to save me more than a few seconds at most. It’s not safe to use your device while driving & if I need to pull over to pull up their app & enter my order then am I really saving any time over drive thru ordering?
Absolutely. Cell phones operate by knowing where you are at all times. Lots of information is being gathered on you just by having your cell phone turned on.
I follow you, but I disagree about the harshness. Responding to Chronos’ post, The OP declared a “vehement anti-app” worldview while conceding that he/she wasn’t aware that accessing “internet” and email via a phone essentially requires he use of those reviled apps.
There’s no shame in not knowing that, of course. Chronos explained this in a way I’d call direct, but not harsh. Given the OP’s distaste for apps of any stripe, explaining this unambiguously seems pretty reasonable to me. If the OP wants to use as few apps as possible, he/she may well want to know that a phone’s web browser is an app.
I know what you mean here, but it’s worth remembering that an Android phone’s default web browser (Chrome) is explicitly a Google app. (You can install alternate web browsers, of course, but technophobes who abhor apps probably aren’t doing that).
And yes, lots of people still use flip phones. I’m acutely aware of this because some of those people go simply can’t stop talking about their flip phone preference. On the plus side, those people’s phones use much less energy than smartphones—their phones are powered primarily by their owners’ smug sense of self-satisfaction.
Given the OP’s stated tastes, it might make sense for him/her to switch to a flip phone. And I think everyone should use the phone they like best, even if that’s no phone at all.
